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 New
Living Diary
Index
Renewing
participatory democracy
"Tame
the Corporations!"
My Little Red Book
A
New
Socialist Settlement
Globalise the Left!
Bevan
Re-visited
Multiple Differential Uncertainty
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0141 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition
Check
it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 44 Thursday
30 October 2003
Vitriol, Welsh
style
If you like a
little vitriol with your coffee, Hywel Williams' sustained vitriolic attack on Dylan Thomas
will do nicely. It takes a gifted Welshman to put our national cariacature
firmly in his place. Dylan Thomas has been responsible, perhaps more
than any other man, for the ruthless lampooning which prevents any real
appreciation - by the English - of the originality, the creativity and
the energy of the Welsh.
Concorde
Where's da
politics?
 This week's
Concorde coverage has betrayed the decay of our political
sensibilities. When I first heard the news of its closure, I tried to
expose the gross abuse of property power that was
being perpetrated.
The refusal of BA to offer these precious public assets for operational
sale is a gross abuse of corporate power. "Corporations" should not
be allowed, as a matter of law, to destroy or incapacitate valuable assets
in this way. Such assets should be released to the community, for
alternative deployment.
Point of
No Departure
I positively like Robin Cook. I got
to know him when, during the
last years of Opposition, he was Shadow DTI spokesman, and I was working
with the Labour Finance & Industry Group. We were a group of Labour
businesspeople who sought to advise the Opposition on commercial and
industrial matters.
But he offers nothing to the Labour Party
at this stage. He is stuck in the Old Labour mud. His new book
is entitled Point of Departure
(summarised in The Guardian), but I am
afraid this train is going nowhere.
back
to top
Housing
Troubles ahead
for Labour
UK housing is in crisis.
"Shortage" fuels a price storm, triggered by low interest rates.
There is very little building other than for private sale for
owner-occupation. And even Labour's most recent designations
of residential land in southern England will fail to address the problem.
How has this
happened? The systemic governmental faultlines run
very deep indeed, and have crippled both Tory and Labour governments.
I should know. In the
1970s, I had the opportunity of serving the Labour Government
(Minister: Tony Crosland) as its Industrial Adviser on Construction.
Vive la Commune!
Pioneers of communal diplomacy, pictured
above snapped by the local French press. Now back from a diplomatic mission to Hennebont in South Brittany, to forge new
twinning links between Wales and Brittany. I seek your
help and advice, if you have had any experience of the European "twinning movement".
back
to top
Remember
my chat
with TB?
My imaginary
chat with TB struck a chord
with my old leftwing friend and sparring-partner Michael McCarthy -
but
not the right one! He accuses me of failing to
understand the true issues between Labour and the Meeja, of being gullible
and naive - at least that's how I feel,
when confronted by those, like Michael, who perceive political strategems in every corner, in every shadow. I think I favour cock-up
theories, bumbling incompetence, ill-considered half-baked strategies -
they seem to me to be the norm...
November Revolution
My
political obsession is not with "analysis".
It is with action
- the hard grind of finding practical political ways ahead, in a
gradualist, non-revolutionary manner. My November Saturdays will be taken
up with with political experimentation.
Everybody is welcome to join in! What
are you doing with your
November Saturdays?
1
November: Confer with Labour colleagues in London to plan
international lobby for a new Corporate Control Treaty, furthering the
theme of Tame the Corporations.
8
November: Work with Cardiff Labour colleague to draft amendments to the
the Labour Party Constitution, to create new Party structures, new roles
for the
"Party in the country".
22 November:
Founding Meeting, back home in Swansea, for the creation of a new, third, legal
profession, the Public Advocates.
You are invited to join the
Launch public meeting of the new Public Advocate
para-legal profession -
at the Mumbles Village Hall at 11.00 am on Saturday 22 November 2003. Come
and enjoy a day at the seaside!
29 November
In Cardiff - All-Wales Fabian Conference - experimental
member-involvement format, with ten participating speakers from Fabian
rank-and-file - I am committed to the re-invigoration of ordinary
political discourse.
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Special Footnote
I love the online newspapers, which are my access to the world - share
them with me - click through to their Homepages from here - I have
added the English-language China Daily ... and I now offer you the leading
English-language Indian paper The Hindu.
They are all
just a click away.
China
Daily
The Hindu
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to top
Never miss Steve Bell!
his cartoons, from
The
Guardian
- his wit and perception
illuminate the absurdities of the political scene...
My diary
Now up to date (well,
more or less...)
I have re-structured my Diary to give you a day-to-day means of looking
back to January 2002 -
just
click through
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to top
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IDS has gone, but the tussle between the
Tory salariat and "Party in the
country" goes on. The division is comparable within the Labour
Party, if very different in character. These new divisions must be
addressed, in all Parties, by new forms of Party organisation. The
voluntary Parties must be given a fairer, and more honourable, political
deal.
We need
a
far better
Census
Numbers matter.
Our understanding of many political issues is conditioned by the numbers
which are presupposed. If those are wrong, it is easy for everyone
to leap to the
wrong conclusion.
Events this week
have focused attention on the inadequacies of the 2001
Census. A recount has been ordered, of several city-centre local
authorities, following years of protest. In the screening of the
awful Secret Policeman TV-documentary, the "Pakis" were seen
as taking over the country. David Blunkett's "amnesty" of 17,000
long-stay families seeking asylum was exaggerated, out of all proportion
to the demographic facts.
 "I
used to think of you as a very small Manager..." The Internet has happily reminded me of the remarkable
talent of the cartoonists for Krokodil, the Russian satirical magazine of the 1960s...
Stunning Russian arrest
Issue has been joined, between Putin and
"The Oligarchs". This is a power struggle,
Russian-style. The military-style arrest of Michael Khodorkovsky
is, by any standards, a remarkable event, as if Rupert Murdoch were
arrested by commandos at Kennedy Airport.
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to top
Blair's Palpitations
Truth to
tell, I felt a bit
guilty, as the news of Blair's hospitalisation rolled in, on that fateful Sunday
evening. Because last June, I had speculated about the awesome
pressures to which Blair was subject...
"The Secret Policeman"
The greater truth
 This great
documentary had a devastating effect on all those who saw it. Not
since
Kathy Come Home can TV have made such a course-changing impact upon
our public life.The true
lessons are not, however, about "racism" at all - I experience comparable
racist language in many other walks of life, even around the Boardroom
table, and I find it deeply distressing. The true lessons should lie
in a better understanding of the
character of police forces as such.
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to top
Turnover growing
Great news of growing turnover from
Remploy. This Government agency still owns 80 working factories
throughout the UK, and increased its commercial turnover last year by 5%.
Younger generations may well not appreciate the
strengths of this great socialist innovation of 1947. In the
immediate aftermath of war, it represented a great act of faith, creating
special-purpose environments in which those with disabilities (then,
often war-related) could earn a decent living doing productive work in
an environment adapted to their needs. Brilliant new management
methods were devised, to regulate the conduct of "fair trade" between
Remploy and mainstream firms.
Curbing Litigation
Given the chance, the Court of Appeal is ready to damp down the fires of
litigation now consuming
US society.
UK
senior judges are showing good common sense, and signalling that there is
no need for us to go down the disruptive American path. The trouble is
that, because of high legal fees, very few cases
get to the Court of
Appeal, for authoritative decision. That means that maverick local
judgments and (worse still) settlements out-of-court come to
dominate the gossip scene, and shape popular culture.
Two recent gold-digging plaintiffs got their come-uppance recently in
the Court of Appeal – Ms Laverton and Ms Beaton.
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to top
 Try
BBC News, the public service website
for the best and quickest access to the news, as well as a huge political
data resource, the BBC is unbeatable. We must never lose sight of the
distinctive qualities, and unique potential, of public service
institutions.
I
enjoy dipping into informed US West Coast chat, always
up to the minute, which can be found at
www.metafilter.com.
One year ago
As a political activist, this time of
year has its own excitement for me - anticipation of the Queens Speech,
the Government's attempt to "set the political agenda" for the coming year
- these are the things I was thinking and writing about at the end of
October, 2002...
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Recent topics
Economies to be responsive >>>
The Spin is in the Media...
...not in the
Message
>>>
Pertax? New form
of "smart" tax?
>>>
My chat with Tony Blair
>>>
Party Conference 2003: Issues
>>>
Busking: Key Political Parable
>>>
Immigration Some Blunkett advances >>>
How to organise
the Police
>>>
Smacking children is
barbaric >>>
Judges rule OK
>>>
Missing liberal sensibilities >>>
Planning system in
disarray >>>
And read my Big Theory itself, at
Multiple Differential
Uncertainty...
Or try my snappier and more practical analysis of the Corporations
and the Left
Coming to Terms
back
to top
0141 Make sure you have not missed the previous edition
Check
it out
And the one
before that?
Other recent topics
highlighted here
Week 44 Thursday
30 October 2003
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